They claim in the article that predators will use MySpace to discover summer camps where children are going and then possibly kidnap them or something worse. Summer camps don't suddenly pop-up over night and contact parents via ESP to get their children to come; they advertise in the paper, on the Internet, and by fliers
This is what is know as a "movie plot" something far more likely to happen in fiction being portrayed as a real world risk.
Disagree completely. You simply cannot push the burden of chaperoning kids onto Myspace the same way you can't expect phone companies to monitor calls to make sure the conversation is safe. That's silly.
Actually it's not just silly it's highly dangerous to anyone using the communications media.
That's silly. All Myspace is is a communications medium and there's absolutely no way they, as a company, can ensure that all the communication that takes place within the medium happens to be safe.
Even assuming that you could come up with a universal definition of "safe" there is still the problem of trusting whoever's doing the monitoring.
With the exception of the twits threatening to extort MySpace and posting about it thereupon, every other "problem" involved some busybody 3rd party authority-figure overstepping their bounds and panicking over harmless boasting and dick-waving.
There'd be more to worry about if teenagers were not enguaging in such "boasting and dick-waving". It isn't impossible that some of these "busybody 3rd party authority-figures" are actually highly dangerous people trying to draw attention away from their own actions.
1. Lightning strikes can occur on any day, even in the absence of clouds.
Hence the phrase "bolt from the blue". A risk in aviation is that it is possible aircraft to trigger lightning strikes.
2. Lightning can strike 10 miles away from a thunderstorm.
Unless you have specialist equiptment it's not easy to tell where a storm cell actually is and how it is moving. A storm could have more than one storm cell too.
3. Don't lay flat on the ground if you are at a golf course or open field. Crouch.
Laying down on the ground is actually dangerous if there is a ground strike near you. Which can result in different pieces of ground having different potentials, this can also be a risk for four legged animals.
Here (in my city) we have a big beach and generally there are a lot of guys surfing. One day (during a lightning storm) one of them with a little piece of metal in his board was hited by a light (he dies instantly).
It may well have had nothing to do with his board having a bit of metal on it. Surfing is a dangerous sport anyway, even without doing it in a thunderstorm. Deaths from both drowning and spinal injuries are not unknown.
The warning about metal and lightning has nothing particularly to do with cell phones. A tiny cell phone is not the biggest hazard. Don't use metal umbrellas during lightning storms.
Unless you are the designer of such an umbrella:)
Don't fly kites with metal string. (Or any kite. Lightning travels on non-metallic paths sometimes.)
A wet non metalic string makes a reasonably good conductor, it only has to be more conductive than air to be a prefered path for a strike. You probably don't want to use a conductive string in the first place, the airflow over the kite can generate quite a bit of static electricity even without a storm.
I have changed though. Now I want either Congress or the White House to be Far Right and the other to be Far Left. That way we will have NO new laws. None Zero Zilch.
Let the Supreme Court step in if the fighting between the two gets to the point that guns are going to be drawn..
Assuming you want them stopped. It might have scope as "reality TV".
And any politician that comes along and calls himself a moderate in either party should be shot on sight.
Unless well armed... What should be done to "neo-cons" though? Maybe "politican season" should last all year round.
In comes Mr. Lobbyman, who first of all mentions that his company gave some big cheque to your party, and why it would be a very good idea to see it from his point of view. He even gives you some examples why it would be a good idea to do what he wants besides the money he bribed you with.
Now, like I said, you don't really care about the topic. This way or that, it makes no difference for you. And there's someone who first of all gave you money (and will continue to do that, most likely, if you vote in his favor), and he also gives you "useful input" why it would be beneficial for "everyone" if you voted in his favor.
How would you decide?
This is how lobbying works. Giving one sided information, and of course, money.
Sometimes lobbying works that way. At other times the lobbiest tries to get any opposing views excluded. It's even possible that lobbiests will want legislation passed which pays their fees (including any "bribes").
Not to mention that my driving license would certainly not be verifyable to a US page. The numbers on it don't fit into a field formated for US licenses. Even if, what would keep me from using some random numbers, you can't verify it anyway.
More to the point this document is really proof that you can drive certain types of motor vehicles on public roads. As another slashdotter put it a "machine operators permit". Rather than proof of age, even "identity".
Let me see if I understand this correctly: a 19-year-old claimed to be only 18 on his myspace profile, and this is worth $30 million?
Does MySpace generate an age from a user input date of birth or could he have written the profile when he was 18? Also since this involves an alleged sexual assault why arn't the police involved...
We should also consider that one of the major disease problems nowadays is just the overuse of antibiotics, both in farm animals (feed, shots) and in home use, which actually, from a medical perspective, helps create drug-resistant and antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Also incorrect use and over dilution of chemicals intended to kill bacteria. Which is more of a problem in hospitals than the home, since these tend to contain more bacteria dangerous to humans in the first place.
As for this mouse study -- lab mice and wild mice are extremely different animals, as lab mouse strains (which used to be pet mouse strains) as have been selected for two hundred years to grow in close quarters. It's very hard to distinguish environmental and genetic effects in this case.
Lab mice are also selected to be as genetically similar as possible, more so than most other pedigree animals.
Part of the problem with that is if you go against the groupthink. Just as here at Slashdot, if you express an opinion based on observed circumstances and it goes against the norm,
This happens in just about any forum and has been happening thoughout recorded history
it will be modded out regardless of its veracity.
Actually it isn't regardless... The more well reasoned and better supported a "political incorrect" claim is the more likely it is to be attacked. Because that is a greater threat to the status quo.
Encyclopedias are not and should not be considered current event news sources, as it frequently takes months or even years for all necessary information about a subject or event to surface.
It can be longer, decades even centuries. Especially if the information being withheld embarassing to living people or their recent ancestors. It's by no means certain that everything will emerge, thus you can be left with a mystery which historians will debate endlessly...
The bigger problem is POV peddling and quite often you can tell that an 'editor' is actually a paid flack of some politician.
They need not actually be paid to be a problem. The difficulty is one of finding someone who is both unbaiased and knows enough to avoid being hoodwinked. With any controversial subject (anything involving politicans, even historical ones, tends to automatically be controversial by default) the vast majority of self selected "editor" candidates will be "POV peddlers".
i've said this before: the government needs some data to be able to protect us from crimes. would you rather have it have more data or less; more protection or less?
Government having more irrelevent data could equate to less protection.
that's like saying would you rather have fewer cops.
It depends what those cops are actually doing. X cops on the street may be a lot more effective at dealing with and detering crime than Y cops sitting on their backsides looking at computer screens. Even if Y is greater than X.
That's one of the problems. Do you trust them to be competent enough to keep all of the data secure for criminals in the public? The greater risk is likely to come from spys in their midst. Regardless of if these spys work for other governments, organised crime or even corporate entities. Combined with governments just handing over the information to other governments...
The problem with your assement here is the definition of what's illegal. Sure, that's fine if it's ensuring that violent criminals are being taken care of, but as it's used against (yours, ours, my) children for downloading music, or later down the road against those that disagree or speak against what they do (or what we don't know that they do), then you have a problem.
Part of the problem is that violent criminals are dangerous to try and catch. Someone who is activly planning a mass murder isn't likely to be frightened by some police uniforms, especially if they are well armed and care little about their own life. A teenager downloading music isn't likely to have a machine gun and high explosives to hand. Political opponents tend to use words rather than ordinance. The difficulty is how do you keep security services focused on the job they claim to be doing. When there are so many easier options available to create the illusion of doing their job.
What is so frightening about the data that the NSA/FBI is gathering about U.S. citizens is that while they claim it will solely be used to look for terrorists today, next year they will be using it to look for drug dealers, then file-sharers, then political "radicals", etc.
What proportion of the time will it actually get used to look for actual terrorists? There's also the issue of what happens when the "wrong" terrorists get caught. e.g. radical Zionists, Christian anti-abortionists, Arabs opposed to Bin Laden et al, etc. Someone might actually think that US Government policy is to catch all terrorists. Thus do something like getting ones backed by the US Government arrested or, slightly less damaging, some which the US Government dosn't care much about.
Are you telling me you've never heard of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI? Thanks to the FOIA, we now at least know some of what was done in the past. And yes, it does include blackmail. The great thing about evil bureaucracies (as opposed to, say, most evil individuals) is they tend to keep a copious paper trail.
How often is this of use to their current victims? As opposed to people researching history though.
it's not an actual loss of $250 billion, that figure no doubt represents the POTENTIAL lost revenues if every single downloaded or swapped song, movie and program actually represents a lost sale. Anyone with half a brain (and that excludes virtually all politicians and entertainment industry executives) knows that's a load of crap (the rest of the aforementioned executives knows it's a load of crap but they like the sound of it anyway).
There are three sensible senarios with an "illegal" download. The first is the downloader would otherwise have bought the "legit" version. The second is that the downloader would not have bought it anyway. The third is that because they were able to "try it out" they subsequently bought it and/or related products. There can be subtle variations, e.g. someone who has used pirated software persuading his/her employer to buy it for work.
20usd for a movie, upwards of 400usd or more for software programs? if push came to shove, people would find cheaper alternatives or go without. if piracy was eliminated somehow "overnight", industry revenues would not jump $250 billion a year automagically. and that's the simple truth.
If the third senario is more common than the first one then the result may well be that revenues will actually go down. There's also the factor that most people, both real and corporate, only have so much to spend on music/music/software/etc. Thus once they have spent that amount of money any illicit downloading is under senario two, which is completly revenue neutral.
Semantics of 'War on Terror' aside, the fact that it is unwinnable (which would be eliminating terrorism forever), in no way makes it a more or less worthy cause.
For example, you can never absolutely squash organized crime, but that is no reason to stop fighting it. Calling it the 'War on Mafia' might be a dumb name, given that it is so obviously a good cause. But in the case of terrorism, some on the right would argue that there are people who morally allow terrorism for some means to an end, and so the war on terror may not be an 'obviously good cause' to them.
Problem is that virtually all governments are guilty of handing over they taxpayers money (delibratly) to terrorists. As well as being highly selective on who they apply "anti-terrorism" laws against.
The US is upset that people are making copies of movies and they aren't getting paid; people are pirating so much US media because there's so much of it and so little that's indigenous; the lack of indigenous production is in large part the result of the US 'cultural export' practices: for example, dumping TV shows and movies in places like the 3rd world.
How many of these are filmed only in the US, with everyone involved in the production being a US Citizen in any case:)
US cultural protectionism at home: is that early 90s(?) ban on Canadian musicians still in place in the US?
The US was concerned about being over-run by Canadian musicians. No new Canadian bands touring the US. I suppose they were taking jobs away from good, red-blooded American boys and girls.
It dosn't say a lot for US musical talent considering that the US has around 9 times the population of Canada. So in order to be "over-run" the US would need to be producing talented musicians at least 1/20th the rate of Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
They claim in the article that predators will use MySpace to discover summer camps where children are going and then possibly kidnap them or something worse. Summer camps don't suddenly pop-up over night and contact parents via ESP to get their children to come; they advertise in the paper, on the Internet, and by fliers
This is what is know as a "movie plot" something far more likely to happen in fiction being portrayed as a real world risk.
Disagree completely. You simply cannot push the burden of chaperoning kids onto Myspace the same way you can't expect phone companies to monitor calls to make sure the conversation is safe. That's silly.
Actually it's not just silly it's highly dangerous to anyone using the communications media.
That's silly. All Myspace is is a communications medium and there's absolutely no way they, as a company, can ensure that all the communication that takes place within the medium happens to be safe.
Even assuming that you could come up with a universal definition of "safe" there is still the problem of trusting whoever's doing the monitoring.
With the exception of the twits threatening to extort MySpace and posting about it thereupon, every other "problem" involved some busybody 3rd party authority-figure overstepping their bounds and panicking over harmless boasting and dick-waving.
There'd be more to worry about if teenagers were not enguaging in such "boasting and dick-waving". It isn't impossible that some of these "busybody 3rd party authority-figures" are actually highly dangerous people trying to draw attention away from their own actions.
1. Lightning strikes can occur on any day, even in the absence of clouds.
Hence the phrase "bolt from the blue".
A risk in aviation is that it is possible aircraft to trigger lightning strikes.
2. Lightning can strike 10 miles away from a thunderstorm.
Unless you have specialist equiptment it's not easy to tell where a storm cell actually is and how it is moving. A storm could have more than one storm cell too.
3. Don't lay flat on the ground if you are at a golf course or open field. Crouch.
Laying down on the ground is actually dangerous if there is a ground strike near you. Which can result in different pieces of ground having different potentials, this can also be a risk for four legged animals.
Here (in my city) we have a big beach and generally there are a lot of guys surfing. One day (during a lightning storm) one of them with a little piece of metal in his board was hited by a light (he dies instantly).
It may well have had nothing to do with his board having a bit of metal on it.
Surfing is a dangerous sport anyway, even without doing it in a thunderstorm. Deaths from both drowning and spinal injuries are not unknown.
The warning about metal and lightning has nothing particularly to do with cell phones. A tiny cell phone is not the biggest hazard. Don't use metal umbrellas during lightning storms.
Unless you are the designer of such an umbrella
Don't fly kites with metal string. (Or any kite. Lightning travels on non-metallic paths sometimes.)
A wet non metalic string makes a reasonably good conductor, it only has to be more conductive than air to be a prefered path for a strike. You probably don't want to use a conductive string in the first place, the airflow over the kite can generate quite a bit of static electricity even without a storm.
I have changed though. Now I want either Congress or the White House to be Far Right and the other to be Far Left. That way we will have NO new laws. None Zero Zilch.
Let the Supreme Court step in if the fighting between the two gets to the point that guns are going to be drawn..
Assuming you want them stopped. It might have scope as "reality TV".
And any politician that comes along and calls himself a moderate in either party should be shot on sight.
Unless well armed... What should be done to "neo-cons" though? Maybe "politican season" should last all year round.
In comes Mr. Lobbyman, who first of all mentions that his company gave some big cheque to your party, and why it would be a very good idea to see it from his point of view. He even gives you some examples why it would be a good idea to do what he wants besides the money he bribed you with.
Now, like I said, you don't really care about the topic. This way or that, it makes no difference for you. And there's someone who first of all gave you money (and will continue to do that, most likely, if you vote in his favor), and he also gives you "useful input" why it would be beneficial for "everyone" if you voted in his favor.
How would you decide?
This is how lobbying works. Giving one sided information, and of course, money.
Sometimes lobbying works that way. At other times the lobbiest tries to get any opposing views excluded. It's even possible that lobbiests will want legislation passed which pays their fees (including any "bribes").
Not to mention that my driving license would certainly not be verifyable to a US page. The numbers on it don't fit into a field formated for US licenses. Even if, what would keep me from using some random numbers, you can't verify it anyway.
More to the point this document is really proof that you can drive certain types of motor vehicles on public roads. As another slashdotter put it a "machine operators permit". Rather than proof of age, even "identity".
Let me see if I understand this correctly: a 19-year-old claimed to be only 18 on his myspace profile, and this is worth $30 million?
Does MySpace generate an age from a user input date of birth or could he have written the profile when he was 18?
Also since this involves an alleged sexual assault why arn't the police involved...
We should also consider that one of the major disease problems nowadays is just the overuse of antibiotics, both in farm animals (feed, shots) and in home use, which actually, from a medical perspective, helps create drug-resistant and antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Also incorrect use and over dilution of chemicals intended to kill bacteria. Which is more of a problem in hospitals than the home, since these tend to contain more bacteria dangerous to humans in the first place.
As for this mouse study -- lab mice and wild mice are extremely different animals, as lab mouse strains (which used to be pet mouse strains) as have been selected for two hundred years to grow in close quarters. It's very hard to distinguish environmental and genetic effects in this case.
Lab mice are also selected to be as genetically similar as possible, more so than most other pedigree animals.
Part of the problem with that is if you go against the groupthink. Just as here at Slashdot, if you express an opinion based on observed circumstances and it goes against the norm,
This happens in just about any forum and has been happening thoughout recorded history
it will be modded out regardless of its veracity.
Actually it isn't regardless... The more well reasoned and better supported a "political incorrect" claim is the more likely it is to be attacked. Because that is a greater threat to the status quo.
Encyclopedias are not and should not be considered current event news sources, as it frequently takes months or even years for all necessary information about a subject or event to surface.
It can be longer, decades even centuries. Especially if the information being withheld embarassing to living people or their recent ancestors.
It's by no means certain that everything will emerge, thus you can be left with a mystery which historians will debate endlessly...
The bigger problem is POV peddling and quite often you can tell that an 'editor' is actually a paid flack of some politician.
They need not actually be paid to be a problem. The difficulty is one of finding someone who is both unbaiased and knows enough to avoid being hoodwinked. With any controversial subject (anything involving politicans, even historical ones, tends to automatically be controversial by default) the vast majority of self selected "editor" candidates will be "POV peddlers".
i've said this before: the government needs some data to be able to protect us from crimes. would you rather have it have more data or less; more protection or less?
Government having more irrelevent data could equate to less protection.
that's like saying would you rather have fewer cops.
It depends what those cops are actually doing. X cops on the street may be a lot more effective at dealing with and detering crime than Y cops sitting on their backsides looking at computer screens. Even if Y is greater than X.
That's one of the problems. Do you trust them to be competent enough to keep all of the data secure for criminals in the public?
The greater risk is likely to come from spys in their midst. Regardless of if these spys work for other governments, organised crime or even corporate entities. Combined with governments just handing over the information to other governments...
The problem with your assement here is the definition of what's illegal. Sure, that's fine if it's ensuring that violent criminals are being taken care of, but as it's used against (yours, ours, my) children for downloading music, or later down the road against those that disagree or speak against what they do (or what we don't know that they do), then you have a problem.
Part of the problem is that violent criminals are dangerous to try and catch. Someone who is activly planning a mass murder isn't likely to be frightened by some police uniforms, especially if they are well armed and care little about their own life. A teenager downloading music isn't likely to have a machine gun and high explosives to hand. Political opponents tend to use words rather than ordinance.
The difficulty is how do you keep security services focused on the job they claim to be doing. When there are so many easier options available to create the illusion of doing their job.
The primary purpose of this is just to look for the terrorists who are buying wood matches and lighter fluid in order to burn American Flags.
There may be more truth than sarcasm here. For one thing these people arn't likely to actually be dangerous to arrest.
What is so frightening about the data that the NSA/FBI is gathering about U.S. citizens is that while they claim it will solely be used to look for terrorists today, next year they will be using it to look for drug dealers, then file-sharers, then political "radicals", etc.
What proportion of the time will it actually get used to look for actual terrorists? There's also the issue of what happens when the "wrong" terrorists get caught. e.g. radical Zionists, Christian anti-abortionists, Arabs opposed to Bin Laden et al, etc.
Someone might actually think that US Government policy is to catch all terrorists. Thus do something like getting ones backed by the US Government arrested or, slightly less damaging, some which the US Government dosn't care much about.
Are you telling me you've never heard of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI? Thanks to the FOIA, we now at least know some of what was done in the past. And yes, it does include blackmail. The great thing about evil bureaucracies (as opposed to, say, most evil individuals) is they tend to keep a copious paper trail.
How often is this of use to their current victims? As opposed to people researching history though.
it's not an actual loss of $250 billion, that figure no doubt represents the POTENTIAL lost revenues if every single downloaded or swapped song, movie and program actually represents a lost sale. Anyone with half a brain (and that excludes virtually all politicians and entertainment industry executives) knows that's a load of crap (the rest of the aforementioned executives knows it's a load of crap but they like the sound of it anyway).
There are three sensible senarios with an "illegal" download. The first is the downloader would otherwise have bought the "legit" version. The second is that the downloader would not have bought it anyway. The third is that because they were able to "try it out" they subsequently bought it and/or related products. There can be subtle variations, e.g. someone who has used pirated software persuading his/her employer to buy it for work.
20usd for a movie, upwards of 400usd or more for software programs? if push came to shove, people would find cheaper alternatives or go without. if piracy was eliminated somehow "overnight", industry revenues would not jump $250 billion a year automagically. and that's the simple truth.
If the third senario is more common than the first one then the result may well be that revenues will actually go down.
There's also the factor that most people, both real and corporate, only have so much to spend on music/music/software/etc. Thus once they have spent that amount of money any illicit downloading is under senario two, which is completly revenue neutral.
Semantics of 'War on Terror' aside, the fact that it is unwinnable (which would be eliminating terrorism forever), in no way makes it a more or less worthy cause.
For example, you can never absolutely squash organized crime, but that is no reason to stop fighting it. Calling it the 'War on Mafia' might be a dumb name, given that it is so obviously a good cause. But in the case of terrorism, some on the right would argue that there are people who morally allow terrorism for some means to an end, and so the war on terror may not be an 'obviously good cause' to them.
Problem is that virtually all governments are guilty of handing over they taxpayers money (delibratly) to terrorists. As well as being highly selective on who they apply "anti-terrorism" laws against.
The US is upset that people are making copies of movies and they aren't getting paid; people are pirating so much US media because there's so much of it and so little that's indigenous; the lack of indigenous production is in large part the result of the US 'cultural export' practices: for example, dumping TV shows and movies in places like the 3rd world.
:)
How many of these are filmed only in the US, with everyone involved in the production being a US Citizen in any case
US cultural protectionism at home: is that early 90s(?) ban on Canadian musicians still in place in the US? The US was concerned about being over-run by Canadian musicians. No new Canadian bands touring the US. I suppose they were taking jobs away from good, red-blooded American boys and girls.
It dosn't say a lot for US musical talent considering that the US has around 9 times the population of Canada. So in order to be "over-run" the US would need to be producing talented musicians at least 1/20th the rate of Canada.